Fares to Be Paid Electronically

14 december 2016

The Analytical Center teamed up with the United Nations Development Program to hold a round table on the current state and development prospects of fare payment systems and systems for managing regular passenger transport in the territory of Russia.

Deputy CEO for Development of the Saint Petersburg State
Unitary Company Passazhiravtotrans Vladimir Ishkov talked about fare payment
systems. “In Saint Petersburg we have set up a work group tasked with merging
all types of tickets into one. This public transport pass will be available not
just in Saint Petersburg but in Moscow and the Moscow Region as well,” the
expert said. Currently, the most popular way to pay fares is with public
transport cards but in the future fare collection will be completely digital,
the expert is convinced. “At the moment, bank cards are very popular with
passengers,” Mr. Ishkov said. ‘We ran a pilot project on one public transport
route in Saint Petersburg to allow passengers to use their plastic cards to pay
the fare. At the start of the project, only 0.33% of all passengers used this
method to pay their fare but today already 0.6% of the passengers are using
plastic cards.” According to the expert, fares can be paid via mobile services.
Several options will be available for that: via text message, via mobile call,
using the NFC functions as well as through smart phone applications that can
read QR codes and are linked to the client’s plastic card or to their mobile
phone account.

Sberbank and VTB representatives also talked about services
that allow clients to pay public transport fares. The specialists are sure it
has come time to abandon cash and tokens and introduce contactless payment
systems that use public transport passes and plastic cards. To that end, the
banks are actively creating new mobile apps that allow customers to carry
digital copies of their public transport passes on their phones.

Samuil Gorelik, Professor of the UGIS department at ITMO
University, made an overview of the technology trends in public transport fare
collection around the world. “Analysis of the sources has shown that the
majority of information systems for public transport are designed on the basis
of the three-tier client server architecture that comprises a database server,
an application server that runs the application logic performance, and the
client application or interface that directly interacts with the client,” the
expert said.

The participants also discussed options of the government
and private business partnership to develop the industry and the state of
regulations in the field. A separate discussion focused on the prospects of
creating a universal payment system.